The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

Someone once said that history has more imagination than all the scenario writers in the Pentagon and we have a lot of scenario writers here. No one ever wrote a scenario for commercial airliners crashing into the World Trade Center.

But it also became the experience or was the experience of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They're all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives.

Some major writers have a huge impact like Ayn Rand who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction but it really isn't fiction at all.

Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

Ironically Latin American countries in their instability give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed.

If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that I don't think.

So we come out to Los Angeles. And we met with every network. We met with show runners directors writers everything. And what we had an idea for they didn't like. And what they had an idea for we didn't like. So we went home.

Home base is the support system where we have a culinary team my own writers because of the shows and the books and stuff we have a culinary team of about six people. Marketing public relations accounting and all that sort of stuff.

It's not a bad thing for a writer not to feel at home. Writers - we're much more comfortable at parties standing in the corner watching everybody else having a good time than we are mingling.

Since I was there in the very beginning I know the history of the characters. So I make comments about the tone and sometimes remind the writers that we've done that before.

Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

I think young writers should get other degrees first social sciences arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers only minor ones.

The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past just as it is bound to modify the future.

I have no agenda except to be funny. Neither I or the writers profess to offer any worldly wisdom.

Who knew Rob Lowe was funny? On 'Parks and Rec ' we've got some of the funniest comedy writers some of the funniest comedians in the world working there. And if anything we don't just effuse to one another and be like 'Oh Rob Lowe's really funny ' if he wasn't.

We all know funny people who can't get it down on the page - even funny writers who can't get it down on the page.

We've got a bunch of new writers now who tell me they grew up watching The Simpsons. It's bizarre and they're writing some very funny stuff.

It's funny. People often compare me to other humor essayists. They're usually quite nice comparisons I will accept those gladly. But I am always sort of appalled at the idea of being lumped with other more chick-y female writers. And the truth is probably that neither comparison is accurate.

Some of the writers I admire who seem very very funny and very emotional to me can develop a closeness with the reader without giving too much of themselves away. Lorrie Moore comes to mind as does David Sedaris. When they write the reader thinks that they're being trusted as a friend.

I don't hate humanity and I'm not interested in people who do. Although it's funny actually some of my favorite writers really do. Like Martin Amis. My dirty secret. 'London Fields' is one of my favorite books ever. And it's indefensible! But he's so funny... I forgive him everything.